It is difficult to separate the teacher in me from the learner in me. Just when I’m not looking, my teacher self recognizes my learner self, and points out something kind of amazing. The teacher in me recognizes that I am naturally engaged in a learning cycle on a regular basis. I am consistently consuming-producing, and reflecting. Gold stars all around. I’m like my favorite student. (Its OK to have a favorite if there is only one.)
The elements of instruction can include several complex details, that I will not (probably cannot) explain here. The purpose of this post is to highlight the natural cycles of learning we may go through in some undefined amount of time, and how much it resembles how teachers intentionally design learning experiences in the classroom. Very scientific, I know.
Start With Bite Sized Bits
Breakfast aside, reading is my consumption choice first thing in the morning. My husband thinks I have a book addiction problem, and I agree. Nonfiction is my drug of choice, but I’m really trying to move into fiction. Most importantly, print is preferable to digital. I need to underline, highlight and make comments in the white space.
Effective lesson design actually begins with the end in mind, but I’m not talking about the planning in this post. ( If you want to see how I plan lessons, check out this post.) After a goal or objective is identified, the teacher presents something he or she hopes the students will consume. Hopefully, the teacher knows learners best consume things in bite size chunks. Even for me, the exemplar learner, I can only consume for about 30 minutes before I start to lose interest.
Thank goodness I’ve learned its more productive to produce something after consuming something, rather than wander aimlessly until I feel the urge to consume again. Doesn’t that sound a little cave woman-like? Anyway, back to me the exemplar learner, not the cave woman.
Build, Create, Write, Draw, Make Something!
Anyone who has been in a second grade social studies lesson knows a good strong economy needs producers and consumers. Even if you don’t remember second grade, you at least recognize those vocabulary words from 4th grade science, right?
Now that I’ve got you thinking about decomposing carcasses and that ultra cool ecosystem you built, we’ll talk about products. While the goal may seem to be consumption in learning, what we really want, eventually, is a product. Now, I didn’t say it has to be a useful product. It is in the process of making something that we find the learning happening.
As I mentioned earlier, there is no shortage of things to learn. We could try to consume our way to knowing as much as possible, but if we never do anything with it, well, we could end up the opposite of full. Isn’t it ironic? A little too ironic? Like rain, on your wedding day? OK, I’ll stop.
After reading, watching, or listening to a bit of content, I usually try to produce something new, or modify something I’ve already started. In order to make something meaningful, its got to come from me. Because I am a good learner, whatever I produce will most likely be heavily influenced by whatever I just consumed. It may be a journal entry, a blog post, or a list. This is how I think, process, and apply.
This is the work of learning, and it is where teachers hope their students are spending the most time. It is the work time, and the biggest chunk of the lesson plan pie. Here is a full post on how I use a workshop wheel to plan lessons.
Reflection is Where The Meaning Is
Here we are now, my favorite part.
Reflection has the very best two definitions ever:
- 1.the throwing back by a body or surface of light, heat, or sound without absorbing it.
- 2.serious thought or consideration.
While I could spend some time on the first definition, which would be lots of fun, that’s not really why we’re still here. Thank you for still reading.
#2 Serious thought or consideration. I’m questioning the serious part, but yes, this is the gold. I’ve spent enough time in classrooms to know that it is in the reflection, the debrief, or the closing, where we find out what the lesson was made of.
I spent the better part of an entire year of instruction focusing on how to nurture an environment where student feedback was not only safe, but also expected. Goosebumps happen in a good closing discussion about the day’s learning.
There is always, and must be, time for reflection in any learning environment. How else do you know the time spent was valuable? I guess you could just tell yourself that, or you might even look at student work and make assumptions that it was. But how do you know? In my classroom, discussions were my first choice, but there are lots of other, quicker ways to do it.
While I sometimes do have discussions with myself, I have found lots of ways to be reflective in my individual learning cycles. One of the best ways to get myself seriously thinking and considering is to ask myself questions, and then I listen. Yes, I listen to myself. Its ok, I trust my opinion and think critically before I take any of my own advice.
Here is why this works for me, even if I never consult another human being anywhere in this cycle: I know myself. I know I will continue to learn, consume, ask more questions, produce, succeed, fail, reflect. It’s just who I am, and will always be. I trust the learning process.
Reflection, Feedback, and Coaching
Reflection is one form of feedback, in that it can inform your practice as you thoughtfully consider the value of whatever you have consumed and produced. However, if the feedback is the result of some thoughtful reflections of others, look out.
In my experience with coaching, I was always looking for advice. I practically begged people to tell me what to do to be better. However, the best coaches withheld their great ideas the majority of the time, and instead asked a lot of questions. They highlighted things that went well in the lesson or the learning and asked me why I thought that was.
To really explain this concept, I highly recommend reading The Feedback Fallacy from the Harvard Business Review. Here are two of my favorite sentences from the article:
- Learning is less a function of adding something that isn’t there than it is of recognizing, reinforcing, and refining what already is.
- We learn most when someone else pays attention to what’s working within us and asks us to cultivate it intelligently.
As a learner, teacher, coach, and a person with feelings, these two quotes make my heart want to jump right out of my chest. I want to make giant billboards and bumper stickers of this.
So, I guess the teacher in me is doing a pretty good job recognizing, reinforcing, and refining the learner in me. I hope I will continue highlighting the things I am doing well as a learner, because I love learning! If you are still here, you must be too! Gold stars all around.